San Diego lawyer working on bomber case

San Diego  San Diego defense attorney Judy Clarke, whose career has been marked by her work on such notorious cases as those involving the Unabomber and the mass shooting at an Arizona shopping center, has been added to the defense team for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect.

Clarke is a former federal public defender in San Diego who served as the executive director of the office from 1982 to 1991. She has a near-legendary reputation among defense lawyers nationally for her work on high-profile cases. She has defended "Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, child-killer Susan Smith and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph.

Most recently she defended Jared Lee Loughner, who killed six people and injured 13 others, including former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in a January 2011 rampage in a Tucson, Ariz., shopping center.

She is known for her expertise in death penalty law as well as an inexhaustible work ethic. She routinely logs 80-hour work weeks when on a case.

For all of her notoriety, she is famously media shy and rarely gives interviews. A message left at her modest law offices in downtown San Diego, just a few blocks from the federal courthouse, was not immediately returned Monday.

Kaczynski, Smith, Rudolph and Loughner each faced the federal death penalty. None ended up on death row after Clarke worked on their cases. They all are serving life sentences.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in connection with the April 15 bombing at the race. Three people were killed and 260 injured in two separate blasts near the finish line of the race.